Interacting with Amiables

Whether you’re an employer, employee, in sales, or simply just living life, it’s helpful to understand and know how to interact with different types of behavior styles in order to communicate in a manner that the other person will understand and respond to.

Considering behavioral styles consist of amiables (wimps), analyticals (nerds),
expressives (bozos), and drivers (jerks), each have its own set of indicators that can help you define which predominant behavioral style you are interacting with.

Let’ take a look at amiables in this article, and the in future articles we will look at each of the other three behavioral types.

Amiables (wimps) are more ‘touchy feely’ and don’t want to offend anyone, hence they will go to any length to ‘keep the peace’ even it means always putting themselves last in line. Though they have opinions, the choose not to express them, in order to keep things peaceful. They can be easily hurt emotionally, and friendship has a high priority for them.
They like to get others involved in a team type of environment and typically like to show their ability to multitask believing the more they can do, the more others will like them.

There are some do’s and don’ts to consider when interacting with amiables. Some of the do’s include:

• use personal comments to begin conversations
• ask open-ended non-threatening questions
• listen and be warmly responsive to their words
• show a sincere interest in them
• look for commonalities that you both can share
• be informal and casual
• reassure amiables that others can benefit

Some of the don’ts include:

• don’t immediately jump into serious topics or business discussions
• don’t be hasty or hurried
• don’t be strictly business focused
• don’t put amiables on the spot for a decision
• don’t focus on numbers, statistics, and facts
• don’t over promise
• don’t try to overpower, manipulate, patronize, or threaten

Remember that amiables place a high priority on relationships and trust. Friendship is more important than a business partnership, so if you’re attempting to establish a business relationship, make sure you are doing it in a framework of friendship.